Let’s get down to it. What’s better: a happy ending or a sad one – and why?

First, let’s define “happy” and “sad” endings. It’s not as simple as whether or not the hero survives; Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Lewis’s The Last Battle both end with everyone dying, but one leaves you in despair and the other brings you incredible joy.

I hear this pretty frequently. Most new writers seem to think that plot lines are supposed to spring into their heads fully formed. Then they feel deficient when they come up dry. But plotlines rarely appear out of the blue – and never fully formed. More often an idea is nothing but a world, a character, a single scene, or a mere image. We must take these fragments and grow them into stories.

Epic-ness is all well and good, but without a personal touch, it can fall flat. We wouldn’t care whether or not Middle Earth fell to Sauron if we didn’t get to know Frodo and Sam along the way. It’s the little, everyday details that make us care; that show us the relevance of the big picture by connecting it to a close-up of the character(s).